


Where We Go After That

by Barkour



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 10:32:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2689559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scorched earth policies don't leave much to work with, but Dorian and the Iron Bull just might manage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where We Go After That

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for: side romance, personal quests, my love of romance (that's not a spoiler).

“You’re sure you want to do this,” said Bull.

Dorian sighed: very put-upon. “Oh, there’s no getting out of it now.” He wound the length of cord loosely about his palm, three nimble loops.

“There’s always a way out,” Bull countered. “You just have to look for it.”

“Do you have to argue with everything I say?”

His smile was lean and long. “We haven’t started yet.”

“And you’re sure _you_ want to do this?” asked Dorian. “This won’t…” He fiddled his fingers in the air. “Oh, I don’t know. Distress you.”

Bull scratched at his cheek, ruffling his beard so the bristles stuck out. His eye had rolled up to the ceiling.

“It’s not what I’m used to,” he admitted. “But variety is the spice of life.”

“Variety, is it?”

“So they say.”

“Because if it makes you uncomfortable,” said Dorian, “then we could always do something else instead. Like—”

“Chaupar,” Bull suggested, meaning that game he and Adaar played. They’d roped Sera in somehow too, and now it was ever chaos on the road.

“Be serious!”

“I _am_ serious. I like chaupar.” He looked cannily at Dorian. “You would too if you’d let me teach you. Your mouth’s smart.” Bull warmed. “Tongue too.”

“My mouth is not under discussion,” said Dorian, “so you’re to stop discussing it.”

Relenting, Bull crouched upon the floor beside Dorian’s bed, where Dorian, testing the strength of the cord, still sat. He set his hand on Dorian’s knee, his fingers gentle, palm cupped. 

“Then seriously,” said Bull. “That you’re asking me now, is proof enough I can trust you.” His hand turned. With just the tips of his claws, thumb and first finger, he pinched the inside of Dorian’s thigh through his trousers. “And this was your idea.”

“Don’t make me regret it,” said Dorian, but he was pleased and surely this showed. Bull’s cheek and eye were well-creased as he leaned his jaw a moment against his hand, yet light on Dorian’s thigh. 

Then Bull withdrew his hand, and his bony, battered face, in all regards but the sincerest a brute, and stood, only to offer his hand again to Dorian.

“That’s all backwards,” Dorian told him, taking Bull’s hand and standing. “I ought to be giving my hand to you.”

“Dorian,” said Bull merrily, “I didn’t know you wanted to be _that_ serious.” He adjusted their grip, to clasp Dorian’s hand as if to shake. “All right. I accept.”

“Just turn around,” said Dorian, though nothing could rescue him from his flushing. 

Ever obliging, when it suited _him_ , Bull turned and brought his hands together at his back. Dorian snapped the cord taut.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered. “As if two men could marry.”

As Dorian bound his hands, Bull half-glanced at him. Dorian dipped his head to the knots and to avoid being unromantically concussed.

“Who said anything about marriage?”

“You implied it.”

“Qunari don’t marry,” said Bull. 

“You’re Vashoth now, aren’t you?”

His tongue had always liked to get ahead of him. A wise man knows when to keep his mouth shut, Dorian’s father had said. That was a lesson Dorian hadn’t cared for, one of many like it.

“Yeah,” said Bull at last. “I guess that’s true.”

“I’m sorry,” Dorian said. He picked at a knot, undoing it. “I—pulled this too tight.”

“It’s all right,” said Bull. “I can live with it.”

“Shouldn’t be on my account.”

He’d to duck again, as Bull shifted, coming about so he might look Dorian in the eye. Well, Dorian might have the mouth of an ass but he’d the spine of a true hero of legend, and so he set his jaw and looked Bull in the eye too.

“Before you tell me to forget it,” Dorian said as Bull opened his mouth, “let me tell you to stuff it. I know when I’ve said something stupid, or hurtful, and I’m sorry I said it. You’re allowed to be angry with me. And shut your mouth before a gnat goes in.”

His teeth clicked precisely. Bull eyed him with his brow narrowed. “You’re the only gnat around,” he said. 

If Dorian had never learned to control his tongue, he had learned to accept rebuke when and where and from whom he had earned it. He’d had to relearn it with Bull, as, foolishly, Dorian thought, he expected overt criticism from this man, from so demonized a culture, when Bull was more like to make a mild suggestion or a joke.

So Dorian said, “Well, I won’t fly into your mouth just yet,” rather softly, and Bull tipped his head to acknowledge this. 

Dorian set his hand between Bull’s shoulders and shoved him around again. 

“Now let me finish these knots.”

“You’ll have to tie them tighter. I can still rip out.”

“Any tighter,” said Dorian, struggling to work a finger under the cord, “and the blood’ll stop flowing.”

“Make ‘em tighter,” said Bull lightly. “No. Tighter than that. C’mon, Vint, put your back into it.”

“You’ll lose your hands. I’m not explaining that to the inquisitor,” Dorian warned.

“Look, if I can’t feel my fingers anymore, I’ll just use the safeword. You remember the safeword.”

“I haven’t forgotten it in the five minutes since we agreed on it.”

“What’s the safeword?”

“‘Snickerdoodle,’” said Dorian, “which isn’t at all sexy.”

“It’s not supposed to be sexy,” said Bull. “It’s a safeword. And I love snickerdoodles. Sweet and gooey, right out of the oven. Cinnamon on top…”

“Well, if your hands fall off,” Dorian said, yanking the base knot as tight as he could manage it, “I promise to feed you them myself.”

Bull sucked in a breath. In an odd, arrested tone, gruff and warm from his throat, he said: “Right out of your hand?”

“Since you wouldn’t have hands, it would have to be.”

“And if I do have hands?”

“Yes,” said Dorian, sitting on the bed again, “I will feed you snickerdoodles out of my hands.” 

He’d every intention of sounding as long-suffering as he felt, but somewhere along the way the words came out fond. As he might have expected, the Bull laughed. Dorian mustered his dignity.

“Now,” he said sharply, “get on your knees, please.”

The Bull’s head bent, his broad neck a swell. He settled heavily first on his right knee then on both, and the muscles thick in his back contorted then held. With his hands bound, the back of the left hand cradled in the palm of his right, his shoulders were pulled backward. Two deep furrows ran along his shoulder blades.

“So,” said the Bull in his roughened voice. “What’ll it be next?”

“I’m thinking,” said Dorian. So he was. 

Staring at the expanse of Bull’s great shoulders, Dorian undid his cuffs. Often when he did this the Bull would lid his eye and he’d watch as Dorian exposed each wrist in turn. Exciting, perhaps, to be watched so avidly but mortifying at times, for the way in which Bull watched. As if he were very satisfied to see Dorian loose a sleeve and content to see if he meant to loose the other sleeve as well.

“Are you still thinking?”

“Yes,” said Dorian. “I’m not sure what to do with you.”

It was a tease, of course, but it was also true. Now that he’d the Iron Bull bound and on his knees, all Dorian’s fantasizing seemed rather intellectual.

“I have some ideas,” said the Bull.

“I have some of my own,” said Dorian, “thank you.”

Bull shrugged then eased his shoulder down again, mindful of his hands. He could make Bull wait, Dorian thought; but he knew how well and long Bull could wait. Certainly he’d waited well and long for Dorian, but how was Dorian to have known that? Perhaps that was the point of it, to give Bull what he already had. 

Purposefully, Dorian folded his sleeves up. He took care to drag the cloth very noisily, and he fussed longer than warranted with fixing the folded ends above his elbows. Shirt buttons were trickier to make a show of but the vest shucked with a nice rustle. 

The Bull had tipped his head just so, that his pointed ear was turned to Dorian. Dorian smiled. Leisurely he undid the top four buttons of his linen shirt, flicking the lapels with each button popped so Bull might know Dorian had moved on to the next button in order.

“Turn around, please,” said Dorian, as he reached for his belt. 

Bull grunted, “Finally.” He leaned forward and made to stand.

“No. On your knees.” 

He slipped the tooth from its hole and began to draw the belt from his waist. As the leather hissed through the loops, the Bull sighed. Grunting again, he moved gracelessly, and slowly, in the half-circle it took to face Dorian till face Dorian he did, and with such dryness it parched the soul.

“Well,” said Dorian defensively, “I didn’t know, did I?”

“Didn’t think it through,” said Bull, “did you?”

“Next time, you may stand.”

Graciously Bull inclined his head. “Thank you. May I have some ointment for my knees?”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“Perhaps some water to clean the abrasions?”

“You’re wearing trousers.”

His gaze dipped to where Dorian had unsnapped his trousers, and then he looked woefully at Dorian once more.

“A massage,” said the Bull.

“You’re enjoying this,” Dorian accused him.

“What warrior doesn’t enjoy chafing his knees on the floor?”

“Well, while you’re down there,” said Dorian, gesturing, “you might as well.”

The Bull laughed. “Nice bedside manner, Dorian.”

“You’re the one beside the bed, Bull.” He drew the name out, giving it a languorous pull.

Slyly the Bull, with his chin tucked, looked up at Dorian from beneath his brow. He hadn’t far to look: with Dorian seated and Bull on his knees, Dorian had only so much of a height advantage. Raising his own chin, he made the most of it.

“I could be on the bed.”

“You could be on your knees.”

“Is that how you like them?” Bull teased. “On their knees?”

Almost without thinking to do it, Dorian reached for Bull’s horn, the left one. Like wood, how it gnarled, but with a heft more like the soft stone the carvers in Minrathous favored. He stroked his thumb in the crook at the end of it. No nerves and no sensation: yet Bull looked at Dorian with his eye darkening.

“Not normally,” said Dorian. The grain of the horn caught at his thumb. “But I suppose that, with the right partner, I can understand the appeal.”

He looked to Bull. Their gazes met. Bull blinked and he smiled darkly and he husked, “So then, in the interest of understanding, and, despite our vast differences, coming together—”

Pained, Dorian said, “I wish you would stop making that joke.”

Bull paid him little head. “What is it, exactly, that you want me to do?” Each word he shaped in its entirety with his lips, as worn as the rest of his scarred and healed features, yet turned to Dorian.

Dorian swallowed. He thought, what enormous power; and yet he thought, too, what power Bull had kneeling there before Dorian, how very aware Dorian was of Bull’s distorted shoulder line and the waiting silence and that face, lifted up as in obeisance. What Dorian wanted, of course: but what was it Bull wanted, too?

He recalled: Bull, a hand still braced in the small of Dorian’s back as Dorian panted face down into the pillow, bent over him. His teeth at Dorian’s shoulder, his breath hot on Dorian’s throat: incongruous with the filth he’d just recited with glee between Dorian’s legs, Bull had kissed Dorian very softly behind the ear. 

Then, naturally, he’d fucked Dorian and he’d done it without quarter, hand at Dorian’s back, foot braced on the bed with his knee up, that god-fucking-forsaken cock of his grinding into him till Dorian swore and clutched at that near calf and little ghostly traces of frost licked up Bull’s leg to bloom whitely upon his knee. Dorian had come with snow falling in his hair, and Bull had kissed him again, on his nape, at the spot Dorian most needed to feel those lips, coarse but pressed sweet, and growled, “That’s it, Dorian. Like that for me,” and then shoved into him a last time while Dorian groaned and the ice moved across the window.

Bull was waiting. Dorian straightened his fingers and let them shape to the northerly jut of Bull’s horn. Then he twisted his hand and, each in its turn, his fingers curled to grip that horn firmly. Bull’s brow arched.

“I want,” said Dorian calmly, “for you to kiss my cock.”

His cheek crinkled. “That’s reasonable,” said the Bull, and he leaned forward on his knees. 

If he’d hands free, then it would have proved simpler. As it was Dorian had to fumble to spread his trousers at the crotch and angle his hips, too. The half-erection he’d nursed caught, and Bull said something polite about lending Dorian a helping hand, and Dorian said, “No, I’ve all the hands I need.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it,” said the Bull.

“You will not!” said Dorian. 

He pushed at Bull’s horn, directing him, and Bull, his grin wide, was directed. That grin parted. His breath moved warmly over Dorian’s cock and then his tongue moved warmly over it too. Dorian caught at the other horn. 

He’d a moment’s disorientation, a false déjà vu: Bull was sliding his hot, roughly textured tongue down the underside of Dorian’s thickening erection, yet very clearly Dorian thought of his murmuring about Dorian struggling in bondage and clutching at those wide horns as the Iron Bull _conquered_ him.

The arousal that swept through Dorian at the thought, juxtaposed with Bull’s little inhale, drawn between lips stretched about the discolored head of Dorian’s cock, clenched in him. Bull, dragging at Dorian, sucked his lower lip in. The bristles of his beard, stubbled even right beneath his lip, scoured Dorian’s skin. This, of all things, that made Dorian jump his hips.

Dorian tightened his hold on Bull’s horns and pulled. Too demanding. Yet Bull acquiesced. His jaw widened. That wide, harsh tongue flattened. A shadow moved against his cheek. Of course this was Dorian as Bull took him, and took him, and took him. He did it without apology. 

What reason was there to apologize? Well, and who was it who had meant to keep it secret, like so many other assignations? A different shadow moved, this shadow inside Dorian. Something was coming over him. He felt its creeping.

Bull’s tongue twisted. Bull was laughing, he thought, and Dorian wanted to hear his laughing. Laughing at his expense, no doubt. Still he wanted for it. 

“Careful,” Bull rasped when next he came up. His lips gleamed, made thick. A fine tremor hitched at Dorian’s hips. “You’ll pull my horns off.”

Hardly. 

“You wouldn’t feel it.”

“But think of all the gadflies who’d mourn them,” said Bull. “All the bar hops with their hats on their hearts.”

“Think less of them,” said Dorian, “and more of me.”

Absurdly, Bull did as Dorian had instructed: he kissed Dorian’s cock, lightly on the head, lightly like a joke though he did not laugh. It was all of it absurd. What romance was there to it? 

The whole exercise from the start, that first night when they’d fucked thrice, on the door then on the floor then lastly in Bull’s massive bed while Dorian dug his fingers in Bull’s shoulders and the Bull dug two fingers in Dorian’s mouth to stop his cursing: absurd. Even before that, that moment months ago when Dorian had tried to pick a fight with the mountainous Qunari, so like the worst of the propaganda back home, and the Iron Bull had dismissed him. A poor comedy. 

Twice now Dorian had passed on opportunities to make his way back to the Imperium.

Adaar—Qunari, but not Qun—had looked at Dorian and said lightly, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Bull, would it?”

They were alone then, Dorian and the inquisitor with her brow just crooked. She hadn’t needed an answer. He hadn’t needed to offer one.

“It may,” he’d allowed, but he’d allowed no more.

Always got his tongue wagging when he ought to keep it still. Now he couldn’t move it at all. 

Dorian cleared his throat.

“Uh,” he said. “Snickerdoodle.”

Bull’s eyebrows rose.

“Pardon?”

“You picked it out,” said Dorian irritably, “if you don’t like the sound of it then take it up with your arms. Snickerdoodle.”

“You’re sure?” said Bull.

“I’m sure!” said Dorian. “Stand up so I can untie you.”

“Oh,” said Bull, “no, I’ve got that covered.” His shoulders rippled. The cord snapped three times and then he brought his arms forward, shaking his wrists.

“Oh, you are shitting me!” said Dorian.

“Mouth.”

“For fuck’s sake!”

Bull sat on the bed next to Dorian. He was flexing his fingers carefully, massaging at his wrist.

“Unbelievable,” said Dorian. “Truly unbelievable.”

“It’s not that far-fetched,” said Bull.

“You really are an absolute brute,” Dorian said. “Do you have any earthly idea of how tightly I tied those knots? _My_ fingers hurt.”

“So do mine.”

“Well, let me see them.”

“You’re a healer now?” Bull let Dorian take his hands.

Delicately, Dorian unfurled Bull’s fingers, testing the joints. With his thumbs he dug into Bull’s palms, driving them up to Bull’s wrists and doing this again, till his fingers curled reflexively.

“Your blood’s still flowing anyway,” Dorian said. He was looking at his thumbs, golden brown on the grey wash of Bull’s palms, his thumbs and the fine arch of his fingers.

“So’s yours,” said Bull significantly. 

The force of his arousal had subsided, though only some. Bull’s arousal was clear even through his trousers, the loose material tented and more obviously so as Bull shifted, turning his hips to Dorian. Dorian held a moment longer to Bull’s hands and then he let Bull go.

“What if I were to tell you I was going home?” Dorian asked him. “To Tevinter.”

Bull’s hands stilled. He took a careful breath. So now Dorian waited.

“Are you?” 

He could lie.

“No,” said Dorian. “But if I were?”

“But you’re not,” Bull pressed him.

“No,” Dorian said, and it was more an admission the second than the first, “I’m not. Not now.”

Bull reached for him. He took Dorian’s bared wrist in his hand. His fingers closed, but weakly. The circulation was still returning. He’d tied the knots truly after all.

“Do you want to go home?” asked Bull. He was yet roughed.

“That isn’t pertinent—”

“Of course it’s pertinent.”

“Well, do you want to go home?”

Bull stroked his thumb along the inside of Dorian’s wrist. His head dipped. His horns framed Dorian’s shoulders. Odd, that this would fit.

“Dorian,” he said flatly, “I can’t go home.”

Dorian looked at the Bull’s bald pate. He breathed in. Out. Then Dorian leaned forward to rest his brow on top of Bull’s head. Just shy, he hesitated. After a moment he leaned back.

“So,” Bull said. “I have to make a new home.”

“It isn’t so easy as that,” said Dorian to the juncture of Bull’s horn and his broad head. “Is it?”

His shoulder rose. “What else can you do? You can’t go back and change what’s already happened. When everything’s all burned out you have to pick up what you can and keep going.”

“I want to reform the Imperium,” said Dorian. “I want to see my home changed. Made better, so that everyone is truly equal, to right the things we all pretended not to see had gone wrong.”

Bull raised his head. 

“Do you want to go _home_?” he asked.

What the hell was home? The absence of his mother, lost like some few other dreamers. A father who perceived love like possession. Aunts, uncles. The cousins who fled from the house as all children fled home: one, two, three. Even the master was lost to him. 

And there was the city. The great towers. The old, stone facings. The grey waters in the winter as the snow came out of the north to paint Minrathous clean for an hour or four, perhaps even a night, till the filth and the refuse mixed with it. 

Bull might know a bit of that. Yes. Yea, thought Dorian, on both of us.

“What do you think?” asked Dorian.

Bull said, “I think.” Then he sighed, always a gusting affair with the Bull. “Do you really want to know what I think?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

He sighed again. “I think,” said the Bull, “you want me to tell you to stay, so you can pretend it wasn’t your idea, and that you didn’t have any other choice.”

So, Dorian thought.

“And so what if I did?” said Dorian.

Bull’s hand tightened about Dorian’s fleetingly: a squeeze more like a convulsion. If the Bull had smaller hands Dorian might have been able to disregard it, but he was the Bull, and he’d hands made for things other than holding Dorian’s hand, though he held Dorian’s hand anyway.

When the Bull spoke he did so slowly, and in low stops and starts. In the whole, he said:

“Then, I guess that, what I would tell you, is that I would like you to stay.”

“Because it’s what I’d want you to tell me,” said Dorian.

Bull scrubbed at his chin. His palm whispered across his beard. He said, “That. And I’d like you to stay.”

He heard them breathing, each of them: Dorian, the Iron Bull. As clearly, he felt Bull squeeze his hand again, deliberately this time, and then hold it.

“All right,” said Dorian. He attempted a smile. To his surprise, it came to him. Dorian put his hands to Bull’s chest and pushed him back. “All right.”

He forewent the cord. Magic was simpler and less liable to snap like thread. Bull, pressed down, tried the once to rise. The light was gossamer on his wrists, gossamer that flowed like water off the edge of the bed to root in the floor. 

“Is _that_ all right?” Dorian asked.

The Bull waggled his fingers to say hello. “But I thought we were done with this game,” he said. His gaze was unwavering, but Dorian, his shirt half-opened over his chest and his cock hanging free to the wind, had only a moment to feel whatever it was he so often felt under the Bull’s consideration. As if he’d something to prove. 

“You remember the safeword,” said Dorian.

“Yes.”

“So what is it?”

The Bull was smiling, too: neither leering, nor smirking, nor even grinning.

“It’s that thing you’re going to feed me later.”

“Out of my hand,” said Dorian.

“Or off a plate,” said Bull, “if you’re civilized.”

Dorian surveyed Bull and said, “You know—I think you’d prefer my hand.”

“Might be,” the Bull permitted. Too, he permitted Dorian to unfix his trousers, though he did interrupt to say, “You never did let me finish.” He hitched his chin to point.

Dorian flicked his hand at the Bull. “That can wait.” Then he flicked his hand much further south.

Rather prosaic, that the Bull should have so utterly normal a cock; significantly larger than most, true, and that had been a logistical nightmare on one or two (or perhaps a fair few more) occasions when someone got it into their head to suggest penetrative sex. In every other aspect, thought, it varied little from the norm.

“And what did you think Qunari had between our legs?” Bull had asked, indignant but laughing too. 

“Well, it’s not like I did think of it!”

“Like hell.”

“But if I had,” Dorian stressed, “and I’m not saying I did, I would have expected—” Dorian had reddened. “Oh, shut up!”

“Dorian,” said Bull gravely, “be honest with me now. Am I a fetish?”

“You are,” Dorian had said, “simply—I can’t begin to—the single most— _aggravating_ —”

But of course Bull had taken that as a compliment. 

Dorian paid him a rather different sort of compliment then, as the Bull flexed his wrists against these new restraints. Prosaic, but still Bull. 

He slipped his hand lower still, to press his thumb unkindly between the Bull’s balls and then as strongly beneath, and as he did this he did as Bull had done: he kissed the shaft of his cock, and he did it chastely. With great deliberation Dorian turned and kissed the other side, and in this manner, alternating, with a stop now and then to lick the broad underside with just the tip of his tongue, Dorian worked his way up.

Bull breathed loudly through his nose.

“You’re filthy.”

“Very clean, thank you.”

“No,” said Bull, “this is dirty.”

“Well, I’ll see if I can’t clean that up, too,” said Dorian. If the Bull weren’t the Bull, Dorian would have said he giggled, but that gave way to a groan as Dorian took the head into his mouth.

They had tried much stranger in bed, spell-wise. As Bull had said, faux-bashful, Dorian was his first: mage, that was. Still, the warming hands bit was a trick everyone liked, so if it was predictable, surely the Bull could forgive him. The jerk Bull gave at Dorian’s heated fingers stroking at his perineum was certainly promising, as was the slight thickening of his already thickened cock as Dorian worked that in his other hand.

“Damn,” said Bull. His eye was screwed shut. “Mages.”

The cock head popped from Dorian’s mouth. “Mage, in the singular,” Dorian said, his lips brushing at Bull’s penis as he spoke. “Unless you’ve something you need to tell me.”

Bull’s hands were still flexing, arrhythmic. His eye opened. The pupil was black, his lid slung low.

“Let me up and I’ll show you.”

“I don’t think I will let you up,” said Dorian. He kissed the head of Bull’s cock lingeringly, his lips parted, very wet. “I think you like being tied down.”

“I’d like,” said Bull, “to fuck you.”

“I could let you do that,” said Dorian, resting his shoulder against Bull’s massive thigh, “or I could give you what you want.”

Bull’s voice rolled deeply. “And what’s that?”

Dorian smiled sweetly and lowered his lashes. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? You’re this large, swaggering man, always ready for the fight, forever shouldering these—awesome responsibilities.” He punctuated this with a very long lick, running his flatted tongue in a practiced caress from root to tip and ending with a flick. 

“True,” said the Bull, half-growling.

“It must get—very—tiring.” On the third stroke he remained a time at the head, pulling on it gently so the Bull jerked his hips impatiently—powerfully—to one side. Another pop.

“Dorian,” Bull warned. “Let me up.”

“You know the safeword,” said Dorian.

Bull was silent. His fingers curled. Uncurled. Fisted again.

Dorian smiled. He felt the truth of it. No play at coyness, no joke to it. He felt it creasing his eyes, and how it pulled on his jaw.

“What you want,” Dorian said, “is someone to take care of you. Just for a little while.”

“And you think you can take care of me,” said Bull, his gaze arrested.

“Oh, Bull,” said Dorian. “What on earth do you think I’ve been doing?”

His teeth showed. “Trying to make me as mad as you.”

Dorian snorted inelegantly. “Mad to want to take care of you,” he muttered, and he filled his mouth before he said anything else even half so embarrassing as that. 

Mercilessly Dorian pulled Bull’s orgasm from him; it was very easy after all that. He pressed two fingers into Bull’s ass and sucked on Bull’s plain, thoroughly uninteresting, wonderful cock so his cheeks hollowed and his jaw ached and Bull, groaning from his belly, said, “Dorian, for shit’s sake, get the fuck out of the way,” and arched his hips and came all over Dorian’s breast and half-buttoned shirt in three long go’s of it. Slipping a third heated finger in to join its fellows, Dorian caught Bull’s cock in his teeth to nurse him sharply through the last of it. 

Bull swore again and jerked a final time in Dorian’s mouth. The briny aftertaste clung to Dorian’s throat. He remained.

“Dorian,” Bull said, “you slut.” He said it as some others might say “please” or “thank you.”

Dorian let his softening cock fall from his mouth and drew his fingers out of Bull’s ass. Mildly he said, “Mind your tongue or you’ll bite it off.” Then he shoved Bull’s huge thighs apart and gripped his hip in one hand and his own cock in his other and pushed into Bull. He just pushed and pushed until there was nothing left to drive into Bull.

Bull’s knuckles were pale, stark against the usual grey of his skin. His fists clenched. He didn’t ask Dorian to let him up. He said, “Fuck _off_ ,” with great feeling, and then he pressed his hips down as much as Dorian allowed him. 

They’d done this before, too. Dorian smoothed his hands along the insides of Bull’s thighs—muscles trembling, a little pleasing flicker here and there where Dorian’s palms rubbed at them—and he thought of how nice it would feel to have a good, warm cock moving inside him. 

“Shit,” said Bull. “Mages.”

Dorian smiled. His hair was in his eye. He shook it away. “In the singular,” he said.

“Asshole,” said Bull, and Dorian curled to kiss Bull’s breast, over the heart.

“As do I,” he said, “unfortunately,” and Bull said something in his mother tongue that Dorian thought ought to have seared the mustache right off his lip. He could feel his own heart pounding frightfully fast. It was beating drum-like in his ears. Dorian drummed in step with it, as Bull—huge and laid out before him with his arms spread and his chest working like a bellows—clenched around his good, warm cock.

What was it in the end? Perhaps only how Bull said Dorian’s name. Just that. 

“Dorian.”

Dorian closed his eyes. His head bowed. Helplessly he fucked into Bull. His hands were hot on Bull’s thighs. Bull swore and swore and said, “Dorian,” and his wrists were bent savagely in his struggle to reach for Dorian. 

So Dorian let Bull go. The bonds slithered away, soft as a whisper. Then Bull’s arms were around Dorian and he was dragging Dorian close; he was rising up, bending like a bow to stay with him as Dorian’s hips staggered, then stuttered, then Dorian bit Bull’s shoulder and shoved fiercely into him and let the rest go.

Bull eased back upon the bed. He took Dorian with him. Dorian’s cock pulled free, and he winced, but he supposed that was all part of the fun too. Well, Dorian thought through the gripping haze, that pleasure that stayed, there’s no going back from that.

“Someone has to take care of you,” Dorian said to Bull’s throat. Then he rolled off Bull onto his back and went on puffing for air.

“And that’s you,” said Bull.

“Do I have a choice?” asked Dorian, meaning to be light. It was too late for that.

“Yeah,” said Bull. He glanced sidelong at Dorian. That was all his horns would allow him with his head on the mattress. “You do.”

“Well,” said Dorian. “Then I’ve made my choice. What’s home anyway? Might as well set up where—” He was stumbling suddenly. “Where you’re able.”

Bull’s smile was horribly beautiful. If Dorian had the strength to move he would have smacked his shoulder for it. As it was Dorian wasn’t certain he’d ever move again. He felt very weak physically, yet oddly steady, as if something had settled exactly where it was meant to settle.

“In an hour,” said Bull, still smiling like that, “I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk for a week. And then tomorrow I’m going to fuck you again while you beg me to let you come.”

Airily, Dorian patted Bull’s great chest. “Oh, promises,” said Dorian.

Bull very much did not giggle at that, either. He lifted his arm and wound it about Dorian’s shoulders and pulled him near again, to hold him cradled like that against his side. Dorian felt that arm tense. Bull drew him up, just enough that he could kiss Dorian’s sweat-slick temple and the hair stuck there without whacking his horns on the bed frame.

“I promise,” Bull said. “You won’t be able to sit for months.”

Smoke was rising in thin, black curls from the foot of the bed, where the blankets, kicked to a pile, smoldered. Dorian thought the small shower of red sparks that spat to the floor to be lovely, though less so when the floor caught on the fire then his wardrobe then the walls. 

It was another day and a change of rooms before Bull was able to keep his promise, but life had a way of mucking with things. What you decided to do after the fire was what mattered, Dorian supposed.


End file.
